Settlers attack Palestinian homes in Hebron

An Israeli Star of David painted on a wall in the occupied West Bank town of Hebron. (MaanImages/Charlie Hoyle/File)

HEBRON (Ma'an) -- Israeli settlers on Sunday night attacked Palestinian homes in the southern West Bank city of Hebron, amid ongoing movement restrictions imposed by the Israeli army inside the city.

A Ma'an reporter said that a group of settlers attacked the Wadi al-Hussein, Wadi al-Nasara, and al-Kasara neighborhoods of the city, throwing stones at houses and Palestinian residents.

Issa Amro, head of the local activist group Youth Against Settlements, said that settlers threw stones and empty bottles at Palestinian homes near the illegal Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba.

He said the attacks followed a pattern frequently repeated in recent weeks, with Israeli forces choosing not to protect the Palestinians, despite being "present all the time."

Last month, Israeli rights group B'Tselem released video footage that captured five straight days of settler attacks in the same area, while Israeli forces either "looked on" or actively "joined the settlers."

B'Tselem said it provided "an extreme example of the imbalance of power in the West Bank, with Israeli forces backing settler violence."

Israeli forces were manning checkpoints at nearly every entrance to Hebron on Sunday night, in what an Israeli army spokesperson said was a response to recent attacks in the area.

Just south of Hebron, clashes also broke out at the entrance to al-Fawwar refugee camp, where Israeli forces fired tear gas canisters and stun grenades to Palestinians, who threw stones.

Hebron district also saw two Palestinians detained on Sunday, including a Palestinian woman at a checkpoint in Hebron's Old City and a 14-year-old boy in al-Arrub refugee camp to Hebron's north.

The director of the Palestinian-controlled part of the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron, Munthir Abu al-Feilat, said that 43-year-old Ghadir Dhiyaa al-Sharif was detained after she set off a metal detector at a checkpoint outside the mosque.

"When the woman walked through a metal detector gate, the machine whizzed indicating that it detected metal object on the woman," Feilat said. A female Israeli officer asked her to walk through the gate again, and then "she kicked the woman's legs before she was detained."

Separately, Israeli forces detained a 14-year-old boy in al-Arrub refugee camp north of Hebron. Locals said that soldiers assaulted Alaa Ibrahim Mahfouzh as he was on his way to school before they detained him.